I’ve been a “member” of LJ for the best part of a year, now, and it seems appropriate to post some images of my little shop.

As you can see, my shop is a small one. It is in a walled off bay of an attached garage – 13 feet wide, 36 feet deep, with an 11 1/2 foot ceiling. The space is insulated, but not heated. My two main tools are my old Craftsman 113 table saw, purchased new in 1989, and my Grizzly 14” band saw, purchased new in January 2014.

One of my first entries on LJ was of the construction of my bench. It was my own design and it has been great. This thing is very heavy and very solid. It has never moved even a tiny bit under whatever pounding, planing, pushing or scraping I have done on it. Its central location makes for a tight fit when I need to roll out my thickness planer or shop vac, but that’s the price I pay for 360 degree access to my bench.

My clamp collection is small, but growing. The floor-mounted drill press gets used a lot. I bought it from a discount mail-order outfit (in pre-Internet days). It’s under-powered and noisy, but gets the job done. The small shelf unit behind the drill press was the first thing I made after buying my table saw in 1989. It was intended as a spice rack, but never made it into the kitchen. My wife liked to call in my $300 box.

I have repurposed most of my shop furniture. My grinder and router table are mounted on a cabinet build around an old microwave stand. Mu chop saw is mounted on a computer desk I built 20 years ago and retired when my son moved away from home. The white cabinets were inherited from the previous occupants of an apartment we lived in in Germany 27 years ago.

I installed some French cleats to store some of my most used hand tools. The little space heater on the cabinet is the only source of heat in the shop. Fortunately, we get little cold weather. The heater brings the shop up to a reasonable temperature – though I do bring my glue into the house so I don’t have to warm it up.

The future of my shop depends on making more room available. It is home to our yard maintenance equipment, as well as a couple of unused bicycles from my son’s childhood and some random junk.

I might not be able to get the mower and power washer out o my space, but I have plans to get rid of, or move, the other stuff. Some time in the future, I’d like to get a joiner and a lathe. Dust collection would be nice, too.

Anyway, that is my shop. Don’t know if anyone will see these pics, but here they are.

-- Dave K.

3 comments so far

Looks like you have enough to get the job done. At one time the garden/snow removal equipment shared my shop. Built a garden shed next to the shop. Helps. I had a craftsman for at least 15 years, then decided I needed more power. found and refurbished a 3 hp Grizzly cabinet saw.

I have yet to post my little barn/shop. Just never enough time to gather pictures from the years.

Thant’s a bit more space then I have. Mine is 12×24x8’ I have the same exact table saw. Bought mine from Craig’s list. Funny thing is just last evening I was watching some videos posted by Steve on this forum and he also has the same saw. Much have been popular in it’s day.

That bench looks like a monster. Enjoy your shop. It looks quite usable to me.